Portuguese man o' war

Physalia physalis

Description:

5 Photos · Updated over a year ago Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), also known as the man-of-war, or floating terror, is a marine hydrozoan of the family Physaliidae found in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its venomous tentacles deliver a painful sting, which on extremely rare occasions has been fatal to humans.Despite its outward appearance, the Portuguese man o' war is not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, which, unlike jellyfish, is not a single multicellular organism, but a colonial organism made up of specialized individual animals (of the same species) called zooids or polyps.These polyps are attached to one another and physiologically integrated to the extent that they are unable to survive independently, and therefore have to work together and function like an individual animal. The Indo-Pacific Portuguese man-of-war (P. utriculus), or blue bottle, is a related species with very similar appearance found throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans. - WIKIPEDIA